John Ridley Stroop

John Ridley Stroop discovered the effect that bears his name in the 1930s as part of his doctoral thesis in psychology at George Peabody College for Teachers, which is now the Peabody College of education and human development at Vanderbilt University. The discovery, published in 1935, became a classic taught in introductory psychology courses in universities around the world, and it keeps finding a widening circle of research and clinical applications. In 2014 his son Fred Stroop and Fred's wife Faye gave Stroop's original thesis, together with his bachelor's, master's and doctoral degrees, to Vanderbilt for safe keeping, and a psychology professor there called the Stroop task the most famous task in cognitive psychology.